Migrant Letters
       

Yes we are fierce, yes we take our
              possessions with us wherever we go,
especially the ones you cannot see.

              In the city at dusk, in a one-room apartment:
the former teacher remembers his childhood
              friend and childhood sweetheart, and is moved

to write a poem; there is rain in it, and rice
              fields. At a restaurant: the woman who has not
seen her child in years, hesitates as she lifts

              a soup spoon to her lips. How does a bowl
transform into an ocean of salt and misgivings?
              Its shallow depths are the sign

of constant uprooting, its ripples
              the sites of sloughed-off skins.
Where will you be tomorrow?

              Just when I thought you would stay, a letter
arrives with another forwarding address.
              Have you a grandmother, a babushka,

a lola, a nonna? She sits in a doorway
              or on a porch, feeling the light on her lids.
Sometimes, pennants of color and noise flit
              through the trees, like words in another tongue.

Tweet

Copyright © 2020 Luisa A. Igloria All rights reserved
from What is Left of Wings, I Ask
Center for Book Arts
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission